Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
It should have been strange but it wasn’t, seeing primary school aged kids hanging out of the shitbox 4WD, yelling from the window to their friends doing doughnuts in the Pilbara dust, angry that they wouldn’t be served at the Community shop that doubles as a fuel stop- NO SCHOOL, NO SERVICE- the sign on the door; large, bold and black.
Those on the scooters and crappy hand-me-down bikes laughed as they slurped from cans of Coke or sucked on the sweet ices.
And I thought it was a great idea-NO SCHOOL, NO SERVICE- but there is always a way. Behind the container adjacent to the fuel bowsers, a hand emerged from the window with a $50 note. Shifty buggers.
Entering the shop to book our caravan site for the night, I asked how effective the restriction was in ensuring kids attended school. Unsurprisingly it works with the very young-grades prep and one, after that they get cunning. Boys are the worst. There seems there is always something better to do, something more important than school. That is, apparently, unless the AFL footballers come to town, then they turn up in their droves. Even the teenagers who have long left school will take the opportunity for a smiling selfie. But when the Landcruiser turns out of the school’s driveway and disappears in a cloud of pindan, so too do these kids.
The girls are different, most of them but not all. They are shy and it is hard to engage with them, their eyes too often cast down. But they can see purpose in their education and talk of older sisters and friends on Facebook who have ‘made it’ by leaving and working in the city.
A few kilometres in from the roadhouse is the camping ground and as we wend our way along the bulldozed track, skeletons of torched cars dot the landscape, mostly 4WDs; the odd sedan makes me wonder how on earth it could be navigated over these incessant jarring corrugates. The fact that it lies deserted answers my question.